Figure 1: Infant mortality, relative risk, and excess risk of death for blacks compared with whites, United States, 2010-2015

(The plots for the RR and RD contain their 95% CIs.)

Infant mortality for whites decreased from 5.01 deaths per 1,000 in 2014 to 4.95 deaths per 1,000 in 2015. At the same time, infant mortality among black infants increased from 11.01 to 11.23 per 1,000 over the same time period. While the absolute size of this increase among blacks may seem small (~ 0.22 additional deaths per 1,000 infants), it means that an additional 1XX black infants died of those 5XX,XXX born in 2015 (compared to the 2014 level).

The risk ratio increased to 2.27 from 2.19, implying 2.27 times more infant deaths among blacks compared with whites.

The risk difference, an absolute measure of risk was 6.00/1000 in 2014 and increased to 6.29/1000 in 2015. Number of black infant deaths in 2015: 6907 for 614972 population If blacks had rates of whites in 2015: 3041 for 614972 population –> 6907/3041 = 2.27, 6907-3041 = 3866 additional deaths per 614972 –> X per 1000

Exploration of COD plots

1) Trends in COD-specific mortality since 2010

-notice that the y-axis is free (different for each plot), and the plots are organized by descreasing IMRs -of four causes that contributed the most to mortality (i.e., those in the top row), three saw increases in 2015 vs. 2014 for blacks but not for whites (congenital malformations, SIDS, all other causes). -thus, it is the relative changes in the rates of mortality for these causes that had the largest affect on increasing the IMR more for blacks. vs. whites. -would we want to show all panels or just a subset?

2) Trends in the cause-specific risk ratios

3) Trends in the cause-specific risk differences

4) Stacked bar charts for 2014 vs. 2015

-I find these somewhat hard to interpret because hard to isolate the COD-specific changes due to the stacking.

5) Alternative: Stacked bar charts for 2010-2015 with reversed stacking order

Again, I find this hard to interpret.

Supplementary plots Slightly different from those figures featured above.